Quote from: PrivacyG on Today at 07:17:56 PM

Quote from: Harpaggie2001 on Today at 06:37:11 PM

Thanks for the insight! In regards to your second comment. Could you elaborate a bit more about what you mean by "would take HOURS at most for us to put everything back in place after which all their resources and effort become worthless and useless."? Are you saying that enough people would see the fuckery taking place and produce an alternate means of securing the network? Could you elaborate a little more? And also for the record, explain it like I can barely use an iPhone.

I am not the best ELI-5 candidate but I can give this a try.

If the 'US gubmint' decides to take Bitcoin over, they would need a LOT of mining equipment. All of this equipment they need obviously requires resources to be produced and there is of course an approximate or specific amount of such equipment that can be produced per day or year.

The government needs to own 51% of the hash rate in order to 'overtake' the network. Since more and more and more powerful mining equipment is added every day, they need to have all this massive amount of equipment built, shipped and ready to be powered on in a reasonable time. Otherwise, if all of this is done over years, the mining hash rate may increase enough so the government needs even more power to compensate and reach 51% again.

Now say they have everything planned so well they actually do get to own 51% of the network. Now they 'control' Bitcoin. What happens next?

Bitcoin developers, miners et cetera move on to another mining algorithm. If the algorithm is changed and Bitcoin 'splits up' similarly to how Bitcoin split up into BTC and BCH years ago, the government's massive effort are redeemed worthless and useless immediately. Because their massive amount of equipment now can not mine the real Bitcoin. It can only continue to mine the old Bitcoin that they attacked. But as soon as you and I find out there has been an attack, we will discard the attacked network in favor of the new one.

Let us say we get to change the algorithm so that this special mining equipment can not mine Bitcoin any more. Let us say we get to change it so that computer graphic cards can be used for mining instead. Now the government needs to purchase enough graphic cards to own 51% of the new, intact network. If they can do this, we just move on to another algorithm. And so on.

At the end of the day, it is just wasted time and efforts for them. If someone has something to correct about my 'theory', please chime in and do.

-
Regards,
PrivacyG

Thank you for taking the time to explain that. I get it now!